Finding What You Never Lost
by KrystinaSky
Summary: She found them long before they knew to miss her. "You've still got poison lipstick on your mouth," she says. "I do not." "You really do Sweetie." She leans forward and up, and her fingers are wiping at the corner of his lip and he's holding his breath. In which the Ponds and the Doctor come to terms with losing/finding Melody Pond in the aftermath of Berlin.


There is the sound of a key jangling in the lock and Rory looks up from his sniffling wife, "Who-"

Someone swings the door open and they hear a familiar voice,"Knock knock!"

"_hello Benjamin!"_

"That's…River" says Rory.

"If you two are snogging or – ugh – something _worse_ than snogging please put yourselves together and don't let on, alright? I just don't want to know and – hello, what's this? There's a badly parked Tardis in your halfway, did you know?" River asks, finally coming around the corner with two large shopping bags in her hands.

"Hello Sweetie," she says, casually dropping a kiss on the top of the Doctor's head as she passes through the living room, "believe it or not, I was not expecting you," she continues into the kitchen, like it's an everyday sort of thing, and they all turn to watch her in a vaguely shell-shocked sort of way.

"Good thing I brought enough food to feed an army. A small army, mind you, or a large army of small people. Anyway, I was just on this planet called – well – doesn't matter really. The important part is that when everyone abandons earth in a few thousand years, most of the central Asian cultures end up settling there and they have the _best_ Thai food, and I know how you feel about Thai food, Mum, so-"

Amy promptly bursts into tears.

"Mum, what…," River pokes her head back into the room, futuristic Thai food apparently forgotten as she whirls to face the Doctor, with her hands on her hips. "What did you do!?"

"Me? Why do you assume it's me? What about Rory there, he's-"

"Rory's too wonderful to make her cry like that, don't be stupid."

"Er, River?" says Rory, "actually we just came back from this, um, trip…."

"What trip? Where did you…" she trails off as her eyes take them in; Rory with one arm around Amy's jean-jacket clad shoulder and the other cradled painfully in his lap, the doctor in his suit with his top hat tossed over a lamp on the table next to him with the brand new daily newspaper. "Oh," She says, picking up the paper, reading 'Leadworth's Crop Circles' emblazoned over a picture of the word 'Doctor' carved out of a wheat field.

"Berlin, was it?" she asks, with a small, sad sort of smile.

"Well, technically, we just came from the Sister's of the Infinite Schism in the 51st century, but before that, yes, Berlin," the Doctor confirms, resting his elbow on the arm of the chair and rubbing between his eyes.

"We didn't know," Amy sobs from the couch, "all those years we didn't _know_, and I _shot _you and we just _left_ you there at the hospital and, and-"

River shushes her, kneeling in front of the couch and holding Amy's hands between them. She presses a kiss to Amy' knuckles and squeezes until she looks up.

"First of all, none of this is your fault, all right?" Amy hiccups and River raises a hand to rub at the mascara running down her face.

"In fact, not only is none of this your fault, considering the situation, you have been the most brilliant, amazing, wonderful sort of mother a girl could ask for." Amy makes a strangled little noise and River kisses her hand again as she stands with a determined sort of square-ness to her shoulders.

"Right then," she says, like some kind of general about to give marching orders, "Sweetie, Amy and Rory's bathroom, first drawer on the right hand side, there's a pack of make-up removal tissues. In the cupboard at the end of the hall there's a first-aid kit and grab some blankets while you're at it, and a couple of pillows. Large fluffy ones."

"Er," says the doctor, "wh-"

"I'm going to make tea," she cuts him off, "hurry along would you?"

They arrive back at the livingroom at about the same time. River takes the first-aid kit from the Doctor and squeezes in between her parents on the couch. She makes their tea for them just the way they like it, which of course prompts another round of tears from Amy ("Of course you would know, of course you would!") and Rory does some sniffing into his tea cup too.

River takes Rory's hand out of his lap, balancing it lightly on her knee and opening the first-aid kit as he hisses in pain. "You should have had this taken care of at the Sister's - it's broken," she tells him, "silly Hitler and his hard head."

"How do you know?" Rory asks.

"About Hitler's head?"

"My hand, you've barely looked at it."

"Oh, well, I've seen the x-ray you're going to get tomorrow. Many times," she tells him, "I'm one of the few people you can show it to and brag that you broke it on Hitler's face, so you show it to me a lot."

She grins at him, fitting his hand into the emergency brace with practiced ease.

"All done. The good news is it's just some cracking across the knuckles, nothing that needs setting."

He takes his hand back and she hands him some pain killers, "when the shock wears off I think you'll be able to appreciate it a little more, the fact that you punched Hitler in the face," she tells him, smiling.

"Right," he says, "as soon as I get past the 'oh, Mels Zucker was my daughter who is an exploding alien assassin lady'. Somehow I just can't imagine the day that ever wears off."

"Of course it will," she tells him, "just give it time. Doctor, can I have those makeup sheets?" He jumps a little when she addresses him.

He'd been watching her with her parents, fascinated. She's gentle and soft and everything about her, the way she moves and talks and smiles, is wrapping around Amy and Rory like a blanket. Or a bandage. He tosses the box to her and she gives him a private little smile that shoots through his eyes and settles, small and warm between his hearts. She turns to Amy with the make-up sheets and begins to stroke her face, washing away the tears and the mascara stains and the remnants of eye makeup. She keeps talking, her voice warm and soft and an unwilling little smile flits across Amy's face. She's telling a story, he realizes, something that happened when they were children.

The happy moment breaks as Amy starts to cry again, "Oh geez, Mels is gone now too, what am I going to do?"

He sees the pain flit across River's face from across the room, but she hides it quickly and rubs Amy's back. She starts telling another story, she makes them both laugh, albeit grudgingly, and convinces Amy to drink her tea. And then, finally she seems to remember him.

"Sweetie," she says, "how do you manage it?"

"Manage what?" he asks, as she walks over with the make-up sheets. She takes his hat off of the lamp so that the light falls full across his face and suddenly she is very, very close. His breath catches and he can see all the flecks in her eyes and the shadows that her eyelashes make on her cheekbones.

"All that effort I put into bringing you back from the dead and you couldn't even stop to check your face in a mirror?" He is vaguely aware that her words don't really make sense, but the movement of her lips is slightly mesmerizing and she's saying something about…kissing.

"eyes up, Sweetie, I think you've had enough kisses for one day."

"It was only two," he tells her in a very not-petulant sort of way. He's not pouting, of course, just stating the facts, in case she'd forgotten. It had been a long time ago for her, after all. Probably. He is suddenly reminded that her parents are in the room as Rory starts spluttering and saying something about noises in his head (he should be worried about that, but River is still so c_lose_).

She's got another of those sheets of Amy's in her hand, and then she's…touching his lips.

"You've still got a bit of poison lipstick on your mouth," she says.

"I do not."

"You really do Sweetie," she says. She leans forward and up, and her fingers are wiping at the corner of his lip and he's holding his breath-

"_All for you Sweetie."_

"_Only River Song gets to call me that."_

She pulls back, smiling and showing him a miniscule smudge of pink lipstick on the cloth.

"See? All that work I put into saving you and you were one innocent lip-lick away from dying again."

He goes ahead and licks his lips, still sort of fascinated by her face, eyes flickering between the pink spot on the cloth and the little smirk on her mouth, remembering. Sure, it had killed him, but before that it had been a rather nice kiss. Of course most kisses with River were rather nice.

"I was a bit preoccupied," he tells her.

Her face softens, and he thinks she must be remembering too.

"I know you were, Sweetie, but please, multi-task." She pats his cheek like he's a child, and he feels he should be annoyed but her hand is warm and when her skin is against his her mind is suddenly right there and _Later Sweetie, stick around._

She goes back to her parents, she presses more tea on them and she even manages to drag another weak chuckle out of Amy. She hugs them both when they cry, and slowly their eyelids grow heavy. Amy falls asleep first, and Rory looks at her sleepily, eyebrows raised.

"Put something in the tea, didn't you?"

"Just a little something to help you sleep. And give you good dreams. And release a few extra endorphins when you wake up. It's nothing really."

"My daughter is slipping me drugs in my tea. I've never had drugs before." His voice slurring, "never had a daughter before either. Or actually, yes I did- have had – I've had a daughter since I was," he squints, trying to remember, "eight, was it, when you came? Only you weren't really eight, were you Mels?"

"No, I wasn't."

"We saw you, in America."

"I saw you too."

"If I'd known, I'd have saved you, you know. Taken you away."

"Of course I know. How about lying down? No need to face-plant on the coffee table." River moves around him, helping him lay down and putting a pillow under his head on the opposite side from Amy. She arranges their legs around each other and spreads a blanket over him. Rory watches her sleepily, his eyelids heavy.

"You're tucking us in," he slurs, sort of smiling until he starts crying again, lazy tears squeezing out of his heavy eyelids. "We were s'posed to do that fer you." He's still crying as sleep finally claims him and River wipes at the tears on his cheeks and kisses his forehead.

She asks the Doctor to turn out the lights (memories try to ruin the moment, but he can't think about the end now, just hours from seeing her beginning), and he does, leaving just the lamp next to him to light the room. It's soft and golden and she stays there with her parents for a moment, perched on the edge of the couch between them with their entwined feet. He can't see her face, just her hair all gold and shadows, but her shoulders are curved towards them and her hand is on Rory's shin and he can _feel _her love for them. She is amazing.

She gets up and heads for the kitchen, lightly squeezing his shoulder as she passes. He can hear saran wrap being unrolled and the door of the refrigerator for a moment, and then he follows her. He leans in the doorway, watching her package the food she'd brought in plastic wrap and start digging through the pantry.

"What are you doing River?"

"Making sure they have enough to eat for at least a week."

"A week?"

"They just lost their daughter and their friend, they're going to need some grieving time, and they're going to need to eat while they do that and Amy never goes out without mascara, you know, and if she's crying it off all the time she's just not going to go out," River pulls a milk carton out of the fridge and sniffs at it, "you know I can never tell with milk, give this a sniff would you Sweetie?"

He takes it from her, sniffs it, hands it back, "It's fine."

"Good," she takes it back from him distractedly, without meeting his eyes, and buries her head back in the fridge.

"Can you stay?" it sounds like such an off-hand question, but over her shoulder he can see that she's checking the expiration date on a pack of yogurt (he hates yogurt) for the second time.

"River," he says, "come out of the fridge for a minute, would you?"

She straightens, turning to face him and folding her arms across her chest between them, cocking an eyebrow questioningly.

"It's not a big deal if you can't, I could use some help with the cooking though, maybe a quick trip to the grocery store as well."

"River." He says again, and he just looks at her, filling his eyes with the strength and the softness of her. She'd been strong before too, pushing into the TARDIS, gun waving and eyes flashing, dying like it didn't matter, saying the truth like it didn't hurt her, killing him and saving him and making it all look so very easy. He can see it now too, all that strength, but now there's a gentleness at the corners of her eyes and her mouth and in the way her fingertips rest against her arm.

_Not a weapon _he thinks.

"How long has it been for you, since Berlin?"

"A very long time," she tells him, smiling the way she does when she says things like 'spoilers'.

"Give me a hint."

"a hint?"

"Yeah, or…you know, a, um - what do they say? A ballpark? You know that doesn't really make sense…."

"Several hundred years. I'm okay now, really."

"Nonsense," he tells her, "there is nothing simply 'okay' about you," he taps the arch of her nose lightly, and it turns into a long stroke to the end as he says, "you are amazing."

The softness at the corners of her smile spreads across her face and shoulders like a sigh, and the smile she gives him isn't her 'spoilers' smile, it's her 'aren't you forgetting something, oh shut up because look I'm _kissing_ you' smile.

"Why Doctor, you've got that face on again," She says.

"What face?" he answers, because oh yes, he knows his lines now thank you very much.

"The 'I'm very glad you're alive and not trying to kill me' face"

"Oh Professor Song, this is most definitely my normal face."

She laughs, quiet and honest and he just can't not touch her anymore, so he steps into the doorway of the open fridge with her and wraps his arms around her shoulders and buries his head in all that hair that really does go on forever. She is warm and solid in his arms and her arms wrap around his waist and she's drawing circles in the small of his back. Gallifreyan circles, about happiness and being alive and not being alone.

"I can stay," he whispers into her hair, "and I'm so, so sorry I couldn't stay before."

"You had to, I understand now, I really do." She tells him against his shoulder.

"Doesn't mean it wasn't hard then."

She doesn't answer him, but her arms tighten around his waist, pulling him into her and releasing a fresh batch of tingley loveleyness to fly up from his stomach all the way to the tips of his fingers so that they curl down around the slope of her shoulders. She tucks her face into the curve of his neck like that's where it belongs, and he can feel her eyelashes and her breath and her mouth, and her hair curls around his chin. It's all very lovely, and he's not a fan of being still for long stretches of time, but he thinks for a moment or two that maybe they could just stay like this for a very long time. For a while he even manages to ignore the package of yogurt, dangling from her fingers and resting against his rear in an unfortunately rather cold and distracting way.

"I hate yogurt," he says, finally, with a sigh of defeat.

"Yes I know," she pulls back, laughing softly and kissing his chin where her hair had been before. She turns away from him to put the yogurt back in the fridge. "Move a bit, Sweetie, I've got to shut the fridge."

He moves back just far enough so she can squeeze the door past him, and she huffs in annoyance. He just grins and holds his arms out a bit so she can come back to where she was before.

She doesn't, which had not been his plan.

He does not pout about that, he just disagrees in a very mature, adult-like sort of way that involves a jutting bottom lip and a bit of a frown.

She ignores him.

"Right, well, neither one of us need to do any sleeping tonight and I've got a week's worth of meals to work on for those two, but I need some groceries. Only problem is it's 11 pm and nothing's open," she says, pointedly, "Oh, if only I had a time machine!"

They do go the supermarket, aiming for the day before, but they end up a couple weeks too early. They see Amy and Rory in the cereal aisle and River insists they hide in the fresh fish section, because Amy hates the smell and never goes there. River hates the fish smell too, and complains about it getting stuck in her hair.

"Really? The Doctor says, fascinated, "You mean smells can get stuck in there too?" He pokes at it, and she slaps his hand.

They do not actually end up doing much cooking. It turns out River isn't much of a cook, and he isn't really either, especially when he's distracted by things like River's hair. A lot of things about River are distracting, like the way she keeps putting _her_ hand on _his_ arm or stands pressed up right against his side and _whispering_ right in his ear about the _recipe _and too much _mayonnaise. _

"No, River, it needs mayonnaise."

"It's a _lasagna_, Sweetie."

"I thought we were making omelets."

She looks from him, to the recipe book open in front of them, to the array of decidedly _not _omelet-related ingredients laid out on the counter.

"Well, I'm very good at omelets. We _should _make omelets."

It takes a couple of hours to finish the lasagna, and River decides that they should buy meals for Amy and Rory instead. They do not go back to the supermarket. In fact, River says emphatically that she will never go to a supermarket with him again (something about sitting in the shopping carts. He doesn't see the problem). They go to Leadworth. There are only two restaurants in town, and River goes to both where she buys a week's supply of Amy and Rory's favorites.

At the second restaurant he waits for her by the front doors. There's a bulletin board pinned up on the wall covered in photographs of smiling customers. Amy and Rory are there, looking very young. Amy's cheeks are still a bit pudgy, caught somewhere in between the little girl he'd met so long ago and the woman they'd left sleeping on the couch. Mels is squeezed in between them, and he's not sure if he's imagining the wistfulness to her smile or not.

When River comes out of the restaurant he takes the bag out of her hands and squeezes his fingers in between hers.

River insists on piloting them back to Amy and Rory's.

"It's v_ery, very_ important for us to be there when they wake up, Sweetie."

He tries to argue with her, standing defensively in front of the console, but then she reaches through his outstretched arms and just as he's planning to slap her hands away he's suddenly aware of the way she is _right there_ and grinning (more smirking, really) right into his face from a very short distance.

"_Watch out that bowtie!"_

By the time he's remembered to start arguing again they're already landing. Quietly, sans the sound of the breaks _vwerping,_ which he complains about.

They get back to the house a few hours after they left. It's 4am and still dark, but by the time they get everything in the freezer there's a faint glow brimming at the edges of the sky. The Doctor ducks into the living room to check on the Ponds.

They're still sleeping, of course, courtesy of whatever River had spiked their tea with. Amy is stretched out completely, her feet pressed up against the front of Rory's shins as he huddles against the opposite arm of the coach, knees almost under his chin. The Doctor does his best to convince Amy to bend her legs a bit, but she just scowls and mutters in her sleep as she slouches down the couch and determinedly stretches her legs out farther. Rory ends up with her feet in his face and the Doctor gives up.

Even sleeping (and drugged) Amy Pond is just _so_ Scottish.

He wanders back into the kitchen, and for just a second feels a spike of panic, because River isn't there anymore. Then he sees the back of her head through the kitchen window.

She's sitting in the backyard. There's a nice lawn set, with chairs and everything, but she's sitting on the grass, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head tipped back to watch the fading stars. He sits next to her, quietly, and she's barefoot, her feet pale and small against the dark grass.

_As the sun sets and the landscape darkens she slips her feet back into her sandals._

"_Well it's been lovely Sweetie, but we'd better get going, nighttime on Asgard is c_old._"_

"_Been here before, have you?" He asks. He doesn't stand, doesn't reach for his own shoes yet. He almost hadn't come, but now that it's time to go he finds that he doesn't really want to leave._

"_Oh yes, about 100 years from now they build a very nice restaurant right here on this spot." She pats the grass next to their picnic blanket. "And a hotel," she winks at him, laughing as she stands, and it's enough to scare him back into the Tardis with a hasty goodbye. _

"Have I taken you to Asgard yet?"

She looks over at him, brow furrowed in confusion as she searches his face, "Yes," she says slowly, "I didn't think _you'd_ taken me to Asgard yet though…."

"Oh, no, I haven't, sorry. Just checking something." He smiles brightly.

"You shouldn't know about that, that's spoilers – did I tell you that?"

"Well, sort of…."

She laughs at him, "Oh bless, look at you blushing, you are young aren't you? She seems to find him very amusing, because she keeps laughing, "For a minute there I thought maybe you were older after all."

"I _am_ older!" he insists, not pouting. Definitely not pouting.

"You aren't, really," she says, and there's just a bit of wistfulness in her voice as her laughter fades that sort of….hurts a bit.

She seems to notice, because she holds his hand and scoots her hips right over next to his and puts her head on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Sweetie." He squeezes her fingers between his, "I was just a bit…surprised, when I realized. I mean, I always thought you were…older when we met in Berlin. That you'd had a bit more time to, you know, start to….feel that way."

"Ah yes," he says, awkwardly pulling his unoccupied arm around to pull pieces of her hair straight and watch it bounce back as he lets go, "you mean my dying words. Good wasn't it? That 'Find River Song and tell her' bit, rather epic I thought."

"Oh honestly, you, stop _preening_. It was horrible. I have _nightmares _about that to this day."

"Lovely, first time I say _that_ to my future wife and it gives her nightmares for the next three hundred years."

She pulls away just far enough to swat his shoulder, "You said it and then you_ died._ And what's this about a future wife? Fishing for spoilers much?" She brings the hand not holding his up to his shoulder and rests her chin on it, very, very close and with a little twinkle in her eye and a curve to the corners of her lips that is terribly alluring.

_Like a moth to a flame, and touch her nose, that's the bit of her face that's closest to him, after all. _

"Hardly," he says, "You already said yes."

Her smile grows, and she says, "Oh that's funny, you mean after my parents' wedding, don't you? I just did that."

"See? Blatant spoiler right there. You weren't even trying."

"I didn't say anything about who I may or may not be married to." He's quite sure she isn't moving but her face seems closer, which is nearly impossible. She's on his shoulder, after all.

"You said yes, to me." He insists, because he is _sure,_ and his gaze gets caught on the curve at the corner of her mouth.

"I said a carefully obscure yes, which could have been yes to you, or simply to being married. I was being clever. I do that," she corrects, which is ridiculous. He'd known then, he'd sort of always known, from that first terrible/wonderful day, if he was honest.

"You said yes to both you ridiculous woman," and then, oh, it must have been _him_ getting closer to _her _that whole time, because suddenly he's kissing her.

He can taste the smile on her mouth. The curve and the crinkle at the corner, and all that warmth and softness, and just a touch of sadness lingering at the back. The hand that had been fiddling with her curls buries itself into their mass until he finds the curve of her neck, and his hand tightens around hers. The angle is all wrong and straining his neck, but it's alright for now, he decides.

She pulls back after a slow, but very short minutes of sweetness and warm tinglies (out of the corner of his eye he notices her toes are curled up in the grass and it's lovely) and smiles at him, resting her forehead against his.

"New at this aren't you?" she asks. rubbing her nose against his.

"Oi, what are you implying?"

She laughs softly, sitting back and pulling at his knee until he scoots around to face her a bit more, his right thigh against her left hip as she turns to face him too. She casually throws her right leg over his crossed legs, her knee bending and the back of her ankle catching against his far leg, and scooting her other knee up behind his shoulder. She's so very close. _All_ of her is so very close, sort of draped around him and warm, but not too warm, not _human_ warm, and her double heartbeat is there against the front of his shoulder. She wraps her arms around his neck and smirks at him a bit, raising an eyebrow and glancing pointedly at his hands that are currently gripping the grass rather tightly.

"Er," he says, brilliantly.

"Really Sweetie, you were more confident about this when I was trying to kill you."

"It helps, when I have other things to think about."

"Oh I'll give you other things to think about," she says, and then she's kissing him again, and she certainly isn't lacking confidence. Oh course, she has no reason to, she's very good at the kissing. She's very good at the kissing _him_, because she's had a very long time to practice. That thought loosens his grip on the grass for much nicer places, like the leg stretched across his lap, and the skin of her cheek where he can draw circles with his thumb as he tips her head to the right and slants his mouth across hers. She tastes lovely. Not human and earthy, but sharper and sparkling, like the taste that would linger after regeneration, but tempered and sweetened by age.

That thought catches, and he stops, pulling back. She opens her eyes and licks her lips, smiling.

"Quick study, you," she says, and her voice has this throaty hum that makes him forget for a second why he'd ever stopped kissing her.

"River," he says, and stops, because his voice sounds all raspy too, but not sexy. Which isn't fair. "Why _do_ you have all the sexiness in this relationship?"

She rolls her eyes, settling back a bit, "Please tell me you didn't stop kissing me just to say things that don't make sense to anyone but you."

"No, no, I had a question. Not the question I just asked, I mean, I had an important question." He frowns, trying to remember, (but the weak dawn light looks incredible falling across her skin and the pink on her cheeks).

"Doctor, you have until the count of ten to remember your question, and then we're going to get back to the kissing.

Counting to ten. Ten seconds. Time. Time Lords. River is basically a Time Lord. Oh.

"Six –"

"I remembered!"

She pouts at his interruption but sits back a bit. He follows, leaning in towards the curve of her neck and taking in a long breath.

Still nothing.

"River, are you using bio-dampeners?"

"Oh course I am, Sweetie."

He frowns, stroking her hair back from her face and letting his other hand rise up around the curve of her hip.

"I don't like them."

She tugs the hair at the back of his neck gently, "_you_ gave them to me, and insisted I use them, all the time."

"All the time? Did I really say that?"

"You did, but lucky for you I don't always do as I'm told. Should I take them off?"

His hand moves to her jaw, thumb tracing her lips.

"Most definitely yes."

Her smile is gentle and honest, and one hand leaves the back of his neck to fiddle with something hanging around her neck. He holds his breath until she looks up again, releases it and takes in a deep lungful of air that is suddenly tinged with gold. She looks up, her eyes bright and dancing because she _knows_ about the way the air smells and she can feel his mind the way he can suddenly feel hers, all warm and aware.

"Hello," she breathes out, and the word is in his head too, all curly and swirling and _not _English, not even a little bit.

He hears a funny sobbing noise, realizes distantly that it must be him making that noise, (again with the _not_ sexy), but he's busy.

He buries his face against her neck, breathing her in through his nose and his mouth pressed right up against the skin there and the pulse beating to the tune of her double heartbeat. He's clinging to her, both arms tight around the smallness of her waist as she strokes his back. She's murmuring Gallifreyan, all warm and golden around him and glowing soft red against his closed eyelids, and it's the closest he's been to home in a very, very long time.

When the desperate relief fades and the joy settles in it's place between his hearts he pulls back to look at her and drink in the loveliness of her face. Then they go back to the kissing, and his hands drift, learning across the shape of her as his mind learns to bend and blend around the edges of hers.

She is _so_ his wife from the no-so-distant future.

"Let's get married," he says, abruptly, against her lips, possibly in Gallifreyan, but he can't really tell anymore, and with her it doesn't even matter.

"I told you," she answers, "I'm already married."

When the Ponds find them, hours later, they're sitting together at the kitchen table with steaming cups of tea, flying through the crossword puzzle on the back of the morning newspaper.

"Good morning Amy and Rory," River says, looking up and smiling at them, "would you like some banana pancakes?"

Amy plops down in her seat, steals River's tea and glares at her. "Really Mels, you have to call me 'mum' now," she takes a long, determined swallow of tea, "and you know I want a pancake."

_Sometimes the Doctor turns up outside her cell, not happy and bouncing but sad, and she knows the phone is for her. Usually it's Amy, but sometimes its Rory too, and his quiet heartbreak is almost worse somehow. The grief fades though, and finally one day River picks up the phone and Amy isn't crying. "Just come around soon, okay Melody? There's something we have to do. Together." _

_They sit her down on the couch between them, surrounded by a small mountain of their collective childhood photo albums. Together they find every photo with her in it, all the way from curly pig-tails to a thousand rebellious braids . They put together a new album as they laugh together about their shared childhoods, and there's only a little bit of crying over pictures of Birthday cakes and presents. When they're done, they tell her it's their family album. The Doctor turns up for Christmas, and they take a picture together and slip it onto the next page._


End file.
